Nielsen And comScore Duel On Mobile Ad-Tracking

Marketers have been pouring money into mobile, but they’re still hungry for better tools to track the reach of their ads.

Now there are signs of progress at the big measurement firms.

Nielsen on Thursday will announce it is partnering with BrightRoll and TubeMogul — two digital ad-sales firms — for a technical trial before the expanding its ad-tracking system, known as Online Campaign Ratings, to mobile this summer.

comScore, a Nielsen rival, on Wednesday announced the expansion of its measurement product, Validated Campaign Essentials, to track ads appearing on smartphones and tablets.

The two initiatives are evidence of how important tracking consumer activity on mobile devices is becoming to advertisers – and how measurement companies are scrambling to provide more of that information.

comScore chief executive Serge Matta says clients have been begging for more mobile data. “You can no longer look at it just on the PC-based environment,” Mr. Matta said. comScore says the program will be “generally available” by the end of the second quarter.

For Nielsen, which has long dominated the TV ratings industry, the move to track mobile ads is part of a broader effort to expand its online measurement capabilities. The company already can help advertisers track their campaigns on laptops and PCS. But with consumers increasingly watching content on tablets and smartphones, extending that service to cover mobile devices was a high priority. Nielsen says it is on track to extend Online Campaign Ratings to mobile in the third quarter.

“In a lot of ways mobile has been a very dark space in media that this is going to illuminate a lot,” said Andrew Feigenson, senior vice president of digital client service at Nielsen.

Separately, Nielsen plans integrate viewing of TV shows on mobile devices into its TV ratings for the TV season starting in September. Some network executives have complained that Nielsen’s ratings understate their true viewership across the web and mobile, which can hamper ad spending.

“Consumers all over the globe are moving their media consumption to tablets and smartphones,” said Megan Clarken, Nielsen’s executive vice president of global product leadership. “With that has come a real interest and shift from broadcasters to move their program content from TV and extend it across mobile devices.”

The two measurement companies spar over whose methodology and approach is better. While comScore has been faster to market with a mobile ad-tracker, Nielsen says it is the only provider that can offer metrics comparable to the TV ratings that are familiar to big advertisers. Each side has signed up big advertisers to use their online measurement products.

Mobile advertising grew 110% in 2013 to $7.1 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the third straight year of triple-digit growth. Industry experts say that consumers have become increasingly agnostic about where they are viewing video.

“Mobile video is cutting into TV prime time,” said Keith Eadie, chief marketing officer of TubeMogul, which recently filed plans to go public. “Advertisers are clamoring for a solution that reaches across all devices and Nielsen OCR is that solution.”

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